Joel Carver’s Journey from to ‘Nobody Likes You’ to Hospitality Staffing Revolution

Anthony Codispoti (00:04)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Joel Carver, President and CEO of the Carver Companies. They were founded in 2013 and are based in Atlanta, Georgia. They focus on executive and task force staffing solutions for the hospitality industry.

They help organizations find the right talent quickly while building strong, lasting partnerships. Under Joel’s leadership, the company has built a reputation for delivering personalized solutions that drive success for both clients and job seekers. Joel earned a spot on HSMAI’s Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales and Marketing List in 2007 and received the 2011 Diversity in Business Award.

He also served on the HSMAI America’s Board of Directors in 2012. He’s written a book called The People Effect and does motivational speaking, which we will hear more about. Now before we get into all the good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team of workers and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine.

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All right, back to our guest today, the president and CEO of the Carver Companies, Joel Carver. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Joel Carver (02:05)
Thanks for having me, Anthony. I’m looking forward to it.

Anthony Codispoti (02:08)
So Joel, before starting the Carver companies, you were working your way up through the hospitality industry. You worked a number of different sales and marketing roles in a variety of hotels. What first drew you into this industry?

Joel Carver (02:22)
The easy answer to that is my parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid. And that sort of gave me my first intro. If I think about that, that was sort of my first classroom. Forget college and university, but I think that was my first classroom. But I also sort of say that I grew up in the blue room at the Fairmont in New Orleans, which is now the Waldorf Astoria. And that was the place we spent all of our…

Holidays when I was a kid so Christmas Thanksgiving and Easter when we celebrated as a family so That gave me an exposure to a world that I hadn’t seen In a different world than the the level of my parents restaurant. It also introduced me to the world of hotels, which is where my love really encouraged

Anthony Codispoti (03:09)
And so you got a little taste from, you know, being around your parents’ restaurant. took holidays in New Orleans where you got to see a beautiful facility there, kind of infected your system and you decided to get your first job in the hotel industry when and where.

Joel Carver (03:26)
in the 1980 in 1985 At the Capitol House Hotel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I started as a sales manager The Capitol House was a wonderful historic hotel Although by that time a little down at the heels. It was actually operating as a debtor in possession when I worked there and I worked for an amazing individual Ira Babin Who made his world in Louisiana?

Tourism and went out to make a name for himself in the state But he really gave me my start in the Capitol House was the hotel where I sort of say I cut my teeth

Anthony Codispoti (04:04)
And what was it that you loved about it?

Joel Carver (04:08)
A hotel in many ways is like a mini city. I mean, a full service and especially the larger hotels have everything going on that a city would have. They have restaurants, they have bars, they have rooms, people stay, they have rooms that people meet. And it has an entire executive team and leadership team that function very much like the leader of a city or a larger organization. And it was, I just found that it was fun.

I have loved, can’t say I’ve loved every day of my time in the industry, but I’ve loved a lot more of them than the days that have made me crazy.

Anthony Codispoti (04:45)
What’s one key lesson that Ira passed on to you that you still hold near to your heart today?

Joel Carver (04:52)
Stand on the dirty spot in the carpet.

Anthony Codispoti (04:55)
Explain.

Joel Carver (04:57)
Well, you know, as I said, the Capitol house was. ⁓ tiring at that time and it was struggling financially. It was a rough time in the industry, but it was also a rough time for that particular hotel. And, ⁓ we had some rooms that had been renovated, some rooms that hadn’t as you give companies or organization tours of hotels, you’re not always able to show the perfect situation for everybody. And so my, and this held me in.

good stand for the rest of my career because it was true whether it was the Capitol House or it was later a five-star hotel in my portfolio but sometimes there’s something that’s not perfect and if you stand on that worn spot in the carpet and you share with people what’s going on around them they’re going to focus on you and what you want them to focus on not necessarily the worn spot that would stand out.

Anthony Codispoti (05:52)
So is the idea that you’re kind of covering up the warm spot.

Joel Carver (05:56)
I think the idea is that you’re focusing on the positive.

Anthony Codispoti (06:00)
you redirect their attention.

Joel Carver (06:02)
you read right through attention. You’re not hiding the worn spots because that’s what we are. ⁓ We’re all a part and parcel of our experiences. So I think that’s you’re not hiding it, but you are focusing on what is the positive.

Anthony Codispoti (06:16)
Let’s pick one other stop along the way before you come to start the Carver companies, something that was particularly formative for you.

Joel Carver (06:27)
I think that we’ll have to pull that apart if we’re talking about something that happened at the hotel industry at the actual property level or something that happened once I moved away from the property level and into the corporate level and into the more global world because what.

Anthony Codispoti (06:44)
Yeah, let’s talk more about the corporate level since that’s a little bit of a different transition.

Joel Carver (06:49)
That’s a little bit of a different transition. ⁓ I think the biggest thing and the hardest thing for me was ⁓ during the 2008 economic struggles. I had just joined CSM out of the Twin Cities, the vice president of marketing and sales. And I was charged with making sure that we could clearly identify a return on the owner’s investment for every

sales effort that we had. And that required really defining a program that measured accountability and performance. And this was an organization that had a great reputation for sales, but in sort of a warm and fuzzy way. And we were going into one of the worst economic times in history, and I had just had to justify every person on my 100 plus person sales team.

and that required defining returns on their investment and then holding those folks accountable. And there were a lot of folks that were good sales professionals that weren’t exceptional sales professionals. And that was a time in history where we had to have only the very best. And it worked. We were able to increase market share by eight points during what’s arguably one of the worst recession times in our history.

⁓ And we did it by focusing on the return on the investment for every individual in the organization.

Anthony Codispoti (08:21)
had

to have been hard. Reading between the lines sounds like you had to let some folks go.

Joel Carver (08:25)
And I was, we, say, ⁓ today, looking back on it, that there was a time there where I was the most hated man in the twin cities. ⁓ but we did it and we did it with honor and with integrity because we clearly set goals for every individual. And if that individual was not making the goals, there was an entire process. Could we recast them? Could they work in a different way? Could they focus differently? How could we do that to correct it?

But yes, there were more than a few times where unfortunately at that point we had to make a decision. We made the right decision for the ownership and their return on investment.

Anthony Codispoti (09:07)
So how did the idea to start a carver company come about? I mean, you’ve got this experience in the hotel space and obviously you’re working on staffing, you’ve got teams to build, employees, but I don’t know, it seems like a little bit of a leap to go from hospitality into now I’m starting a staffing company.

Joel Carver (09:26)
Well, except we never left hospitality because that is all we do. ⁓ Although now we have a little bit of a foot in the door of healthcare. We can talk about that in a bit, but hospitality has always been our focus. And the, did I make the leap is very interesting. ⁓ I was reaching a time personally when I had a father that was aging, who was living in South Mississippi.

And I was living in the Twin Cities and it was not just a quick car drive to get from one place to the other. And his help began to fail. I knew I was going to need to focus more on that. And I began to look for a job within about a six hour radius of South Mississippi. And that just really didn’t play out. There were not a lot of companies that would, that were the perfect match for me or for them. And so what I decided was.

instead of looking for a job, maybe I could create my own job. Maybe I could find four smaller hotel companies who maybe could not afford a full-time Joel Carver, but they can afford a quarter-time Joel Carver. And I could just support four different companies at the same time. But where that really transitioned was Charlie Carter. And Charlie had worked for me in a task force role at CSM.

And when she heard what I was planning on putting together, she picked up the phone and called me and said, hold on a minute. I’m with you. I think what you’re doing is a great idea, but I think you need to look at it from a bigger picture. Not only could you do this, but there are a lot of folks out there who are providing task force services and there are some other task force companies out there. And she said, if we can build that model, I think we can do a better job of.

And so that’s how the Carver Company started. It started as Carver Hotel Group when we were building the world of how could we provide test or services? How could we provide on demand services or mid-level management and up in a quick, literally possibly the next day model?

Anthony Codispoti (11:41)
I mean, it does seem unusual. I’ve had the opportunity to interview a lot of great folks on this show that focus on either executive recruiting, right? We find you somebody and I think you guys do this kind of thing as well. ⁓ And or they focus on, hey, you’ve got some frontline folks where there’s quite a bit of turnover in those roles. We help you to supplement your staff. what you’re, and a lot of those folks can, there’d be.

ready for work very quickly, right? And you can fill those roles very fast. But what you’re talking about is sort of something in between where you’re talking about you can fill a role very quickly, but this is not sort of like the frontline worker. This is kind of your mid-level manager and up, yeah?

Joel Carver (12:26)
So anything from ⁓ a front office manager, a front office supervisor, to a general manager or managing director of a hotel. ⁓ And we do a lot of work with management companies or brands that are transitioning. They’re bringing new portfolios in or they’re exiting portfolios from their brand or their management company. ⁓ But my best example of this is a

a long-term friend and colleague and long-term client at Carter companies, called me a few years ago and said, Joel, I’ve got a rough situation coming up. I’ve got a general manager situation in a large convention city and conventional location who manages multiple assets for us, who we found is in an unfortunate situation. We’re going to have to make a transition tomorrow.

And I need a leader of his capabilities, his skill set, his background ⁓ to step off the plane with me when I fly in to make the transition. Can you do it? And the reality is we can and we did.

Anthony Codispoti (13:37)
It seems impossible. How do you find somebody of that caliber like that?

Joel Carver (13:41)
Well, we don’t find them like that. We’ll start with that. Okay. Again, today we have about 3,500 of those folks that are already in our database. And they are folks who want to do this every day. They don’t want to work maybe 12 months a year. ⁓ When we first started, I used to say there are a lot of people that look a lot like me out there. Folks that had sort of earned their street cred. They’d worked all the jobs they wanted to work and they didn’t want to work 12 months out of the year.

But they were glad to go in and help somebody for three weeks or six weeks or six months. And six months is actually the window for task force. You can’t have a person on a task force assignment for greater than six months because that changes with the employment law. So you can go up to five months and 29 days, which is our longest assignment. ⁓ And so we began by just building that core together.

And ⁓ looking for those folks and ended up coming to us. really carver started with relationships and it started with a lot of the folks that I’d worked with in my career or Charlie had worked with in her career that had reached that point. ⁓ Now things have changed. It’s a different world. So yes, there’s still a lot of folks that fit that model, but there are a lot of folks of a younger generation who have more of gig mentality.

You know what? I’d like to be in San Francisco for three or four months working there. And once that assignments over cheap, let me hold my hand up for an assignment in New York or Miami or New Orleans or Omaha for that matter. So ⁓ we do have a full recruiting team that focuses on making sure that our wheelhouse is full every day. But more often people come to us than we have to go out and look

and saying, this is something I want to do, how do I do it? And it has to be the right person and the right personality and the right skillset. And they have to have the right desires and goals.

Anthony Codispoti (15:51)
And so you’ve got a database of these folks and they may be placed. Let me see if I understand this, because there’s this six month threshold where something changes in terms of employment law. So could they be in a three month assignment in Omaha and then raise their hand and say, Joel, I’d like to check out something on the West Coast. And then they can take another three month assignment, but not have any gaps in between.

Joel Carver (16:13)
Well, and they can even do it up to five months to 29 days. We just, and we can replace, we could put another consultant in if for some reason that position is open for a longer period of time. ⁓ although our guidance is if something’s going to be open for longer than six months, unless there’s an extraordinary situation, then we really want to engage our executive recruiting team and we want to help them do a permanent fill for it because task force is not designed to be a permanent bill.

task force is to be an immediate bill for an immediate need or a transition need. And so we as a company, we actually offer three levels at that point. We have a task force, which can be immediate. We have executive search, which is based out of our Twin Cities location. And Peggy Olson leads that division. And we also have a hybrid model, which is tasked to perm.

If we have a consultant who would be willing to consider a full-time position and then we have a request, which we know is going to move into a full-time need, we could actually assign the right task force person there. That’s kind of a task to perm. So they can spend up to five, again, the five months and 29 days as a task force person. And then if it’s the right fit, the hotel or hotel company can just simply make them an offer to come on full-time.

At that point, we don’t charge a recruiting fee or an executive search fee or anything like that. wow. ⁓ It’s just, you you, this person spent a lot of time with us and you as a client have had them there for a period of time. If it’s the right fit for you, we’re going to bless that and say, go on with it.

Anthony Codispoti (17:54)
And I think that says a lot about what you were just touching on before. Relationships has really meant a lot to your business to get to this point. Can you say more about that?

Joel Carver (18:03)
I can and I can say it also forced my hand and made me start the company about 45 days sooner than I planned on.

Anthony Codispoti (18:11)
Okay, let’s hear about that.

Joel Carver (18:12)
So we decided in May that we were going to launch Carver Hotel Group in May of 2013. And Charlie Carter and I had built the model and we brought Susan Hart, who would become our CFO. Susan and I had worked together in Florida when I was the SVP of marketing for Visagie and she was the CFO down there. And Susan was now then being a stay at home mom in Atlanta. And we brought Susan in and helped. She was the one that really helped us.

build the foundation financially of the company. How are we going to do that? ⁓ And make sure we did it in a really ⁓ fundamentally solid way. And so we had planned on launching the company in the middle of September and relationships being what they’re being. Mark Carrier, is ⁓ leads the BF Sol company hotel division out of DC that I’d spent seven years working for.

knew what I was doing. He was one of the mentors. He was one of the people I reached out to when I said, this is what I’m thinking about doing. Walk me through how you would respond to this. And he said, we’ve responded really well. And this was in May. And ⁓ about the third week in July, he called me and he said, I know you’re not ready to do this, but I need a director sales for the holiday in Dallas airport and I need the next week. Can you do it? ⁓ And I said,

let me get on the phone to Charlie and see what we can do. And Charlie actually agreed to do the assignment herself. And we launched the first week in August, some six weeks earlier than we planned.

Anthony Codispoti (19:46)
and you’re able to fill that spot in a week without having sort of your systems and your processes and everything set up and ironed out. This was just a one-off, like I gotta be ready.

Joel Carver (19:57)
We did not have those in place yet. ⁓ We barely had banking in place. And one of the models that has really set us apart from the other organizations that do Task Force, ⁓ and this was Susan’s idea in the early stages and it stood us in really good stand, is when a Task Force consultant ⁓ supplies their ⁓ invoice for the service they provided.

for previous week, if they provide that invoice to us, so it’s for their services, it’s for any expenses, you know, if they’ve had to have cabs or, you know, other expenses they’ve had, anything they invoice us on by midnight on Monday, and this has been true since day one, and we are still, I believe, the only task force organization in the US to do this. If we receive their approved invoice by midnight on Monday, the money is in their account by Friday.

Anthony Codispoti (20:55)
Okay.

Joel Carver (20:56)
⁓ and every other task force in the organization was paying invoices on a two-week cycle was the best and the worst was we were seeing them pay them six weeks later and That really wasn’t what task force was all about it was you provide an immediate service and you really deserve your compensation as quickly as possible and so ours Was and still is actually now it’s midnight on Tuesday and it still appears on Friday morning. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (21:07)
Wow.

you’ve been able to cut that time even more.

Joel Carver (21:26)
Yeah, and with gigs, interestingly enough, as that launches, that will be same day.

Anthony Codispoti (21:34)
Okay, so before we talk about gig, when you talk about invoicing, so these are 1099, they’re not your W-2, okay.

Joel Carver (21:41)
99 is their independent consultants. They work for themselves. We like to say they’re in business for themselves, just not by themselves. We effectively are the agency that does the placement. ⁓ And so they invoice us. We pay the invoices and then pass the invoices on to the hotel or the hotel.

Anthony Codispoti (22:01)
Yeah, okay, so we’ve got executive search, we’ve got ⁓ task force solutions, and now we’ve got something new that’s coming called Gig. Tell us about that.

Joel Carver (22:11)
So, GIG really is the Uberization of the hospitality world. And this is really cool. We’re very excited about this. So, you asked earlier about the line level support. So, if a hotel needs a front desk person, if a restaurant needs a server, if a restaurant needs a line cook, if a senior living facility needs a support person, ⁓ they may not know that till the day they need it. So,

We have an app which is now the Carver Gigs app that has just been launched. is now available on the app stores. ⁓ People who would like to work as a gig worker in the hospitality world simply go in. They build their profile. We do put them through a screening process to make sure that they are qualified and it’s going to be the right fit for our clients. ⁓ The client then let’s just pick a restaurant.

Says well, I’m need a server tomorrow because I’ve got somebody that’s had a death in the family and they’ve now called out for a couple days and I don’t have a back spill for them They can simply log in to the portal now that’s slightly different than the app the clients log into a portal where their profile is built and we’ve already opened an account for them in the past and They simply go in and check this. These are the hours. I need the person. This is the background or the skill set ⁓ if they need specific

technology certifications like a PMS system in a hotel or a specific server system in a restaurant. They need those that can be just clicked in. That request is effectively built right online. It goes out automatically to everybody within the geo area that is qualified for that position and that person can simply accept it or decline it on their app. It’s seconds, not minutes, not hours.

Anthony Codispoti (24:05)
Yeah, so this is exciting. I’m going to guess, correct me if I’m wrong, but you have to sort of do this geographical region by geographical region, right? Because you want a certain density of workers that are available and at the same time have a certain density of opportunities that are available to them to sort of keep people interested and participating in this transaction.

Joel Carver (24:28)
That’s absolutely correct. It is completely geo-based. ⁓ And we have ⁓ a program built into the app, is called Geo-fencing. I’ll get to that in a second. ⁓ But we are starting the launch markets are the state of Georgia. So Atlanta, ⁓ Savannah and the surrounding areas, and then the Columbus-Lagrange area down this part of the state. And those are the ones that launch first.

And then after that, we have a couple of hotel companies that have their hands up going, this is where I’d like to see you launch next. ⁓ So we’re actively working with those hotel companies and a restaurant company to say, okay, we’re going to look at those markets and decide which one again, to your point, how can we saturate those markets quickly and make sure we’ve got enough folks in there that can provide for the demand. So we have to have, make sure the supply exists for the demand. And if those work.

Then we’ll begin to move into those markets.

Anthony Codispoti (25:27)
So I think you just answered the question that was rattling around in my head, which is chicken egg, which comes first? And I think you’ve got to have that relationship with the hotel, with the hospitality center, with the senior care center to say, hey, we want this, please, we’re raising our hands, bring it here. And then you guys can go and whatever it is that you do to recruit the workers to bring them into the network afterwards. That’s sort of part two, right?

Joel Carver (25:53)
⁓ So there’s that’s a one step two step and I want to go back just a little bit. Our position is that is the first step we are taking. So as we look at other markets, we have about 22 other markets identified that we believe are the next stages after the Georgia market launch. ⁓ And some of those have been identified through hotel company partnerships or restaurant company partnerships. We’re not closed to other geographic locations. As a matter of fact, we think we will go into them.

But our first step is where we already have partnerships, they have a defined need. So if they can bring us the defined need, then we can do the recruiting part. We’ve got that down. And I will say, recruiting is very different.

Anthony Codispoti (26:37)
I was gonna say, you’re saying you got it down, but this is a whole different, you know.

Joel Carver (26:41)
The whole different world, right? GIG recruiting is very grassroots. So we actually have recruiters working in vertical markets to make sure that we’re bringing the right folks in for the GIG positions. Whereas Task Force, we’ve been seasoned, we’ve been doing that for 12 and a half years now, soon to be 13. And that is just a well-oiled machine. GIGs has been a new world and we’re learning something new every day. ⁓

But we have built our recruiting model and it’s done exceptionally well in Atlanta. We were able to ⁓ fill the funnel in about three weeks to the base amount of gig workers we knew that we needed in order to fulfill the initial positions. Yeah, it’s fast, but ⁓ it is a different world. You’re exactly right. It requires boots on the ground and actual in-market work.

Anthony Codispoti (27:28)
So that’s fast.

Joel Carver (27:40)
⁓ so it’s not a this is

Anthony Codispoti (27:41)
I’m sure that there’s some element of running online ads, but that’s not the only thing, because you’ve got to have people there in that market. ⁓

Joel Carver (27:48)
And eventually once you get known, it may be just that. But as we launch markets, we’re doing it with boots on the ground. So, and we have people working with very diverse backgrounds. ⁓ And we also partner with educational groups. so Goodwill is an example. Goodwill does a lot of recruiting and job training and getting people into the right places.

Anthony Codispoti (27:57)
com.

Joel Carver (28:17)
So we partner with Goodwill in a number of open positions and say, okay, you’ve got folks that are looking for positions. They have this background. Let’s do this. Let’s work on this together. And we’re able to do that. So it’s not just Goodwill. There’s also, you know, State Department of ⁓ Jobs and those kinds of things. So we can partner with a lot of groups to make sure we find the folks we need.

Anthony Codispoti (28:40)
So how quickly do you- You put folks to work. Yeah, yeah, which is what everybody wants. So how quickly do you think you can step into new markets?

Joel Carver (28:52)
Based on the data we have for the Georgia market, ⁓ after the demand is identified, it’s about a 90-day build-out process.

And that’s based on the data we have in the markets in Georgia that we’re penetrating.

Anthony Codispoti (29:10)
Okay, so you think based on how your process went kind of first time around that once you’ve identified the demand, once you have the client base there, about 90 days before you can be up and running, which is fast. But there has to be like an economic sort of ⁓ bottleneck here too, I would imagine. You don’t want to go 10 markets all at once because like you said, you got to have feet on the ground. And so I’m guessing you sort of want to do one, get it working, do another one, get it working.

Joel Carver (29:41)
Correct. And that’s exactly right. we don’t want, and because again, to quote my friend and partner, Charlie Carter, we don’t know what we don’t know. ⁓ We’ve learned a lot from the Georgia rollout, but we fully expect to learn as much from the next rollout that we’ve learned from the Georgia rollout. And so everyone, it’s one step at a time. is not, we want to launch 10 markets at the same time.

We want to launch the market, stabilize the market, and then launch the next one.

Anthony Codispoti (30:15)
makes a lot of sense, step by step. Well, that’s exciting, having you guys move into like a completely different area here and being able to move into, do you think where you’re gonna go, their geographies where you guys ⁓ are already operating with your other services or not necessarily?

Joel Carver (30:36)
Well, so our other services are literally North American based. We just did a map of where we’ve, hotels where we’ve supported them with task force consultants since 2013. And we put little Carver logos at every spot on the map. And I got to say, the map was pretty well covered. The East coast is completely saturated. The West coast was very, saturated.

Midwestern cities and Southwestern cities very heavily penetrated. ⁓ We less heavily penetrate the smaller towns and the smaller communities. They just don’t tend to have as much meat. So when we have, when we sat down and targeted where we felt the largest markets are, we went to the same thing. We looked at gateway cities. looked at major convention cities in the U.S.

Cities that are heavy restaurant cities or resort cities. That’s kind of thing. So We’ve used a similar to your point Geo targeting as to where we had the largest consultant base, but that’s so broad And in truth because we’ve had consultants outside the United States as well. We’ve also supported hotels in Canada. We’ve supported hotels in the Caribbean We supported hotels in Mexico. So but but for gig

Anthony Codispoti (31:56)
Now.

Joel Carver (32:01)
This is strictly a US based model at this point.

Anthony Codispoti (32:06)
Because at this point, with a gig set up, I’m gonna guess they’re URW2 employees then.

Joel Carver (32:11)
No, the gig setup will also be 1099. Again, if you very much think of say the Uber model or the Lyft model where they’re providing drivers and services, ours is providing people and it’s just a short term model. And again, where they have to be in business for themselves, just not by themselves.

Anthony Codispoti (32:13)
also 1099.

like that. It’s a good tagline. Joel, I’ve heard your peers often call you both a dynamic leader and a strategic mind. Can you explain for us your approach to leadership?

Joel Carver (32:45)
That’s probably the hardest question you’ll ask.

Anthony Codispoti (32:48)
How so?

Joel Carver (32:50)
I think, ⁓ from, I’ll, I’ll answer the strategic question, which is a little bit easier for me to answer clearly. ⁓ the first day I walked into CSM, we’ll go back to that example. ⁓ Rob Dan, who was the president of hospitality and, ⁓ residential at the time came into my office and he closed the door and he said, I’m really glad you’re here. think you’re going to shake us up. And,

He said, here’s my challenge to you. want you to get it right 51 % of the time.

And that kind of shook me up. thought 51 % of the time, I’m not used to winning 51 % of the time. I’ve got a much higher win ratio than that. And Rob said to me, if you’re winning too much, you’re not trying anything new and different and you’re not taking any risks. And he said, we’re entering a time where we’re going to have to take risks to get it right. So if you’re to play it safe and think you’re going to win every time, we’ve got another challenge.

And so as we begin to move through this economic time and begin to develop strategies, ⁓ that was something I really kept in mind is could we get it right every time? And that’s the thing that I realized today that we can’t. And to go back to your question about temporary staffing, right? The true temporary staffing model. I told you that we tried that model a few years ago before COVID.

and we opened what was then called Carver World Temps, which was a true staffing model. And we just could not provide the level of service that we were used to providing and the quality of people that we were used to providing every day. So we launched what we thought would work. It worked to an extent, it created a great amount of revenue for the company, but it didn’t create a lot of value for the company. So we had to go back and go, okay, this is not what we want to do. Now,

Had the world been different and we’ve been able to launch what is now gigs, it would have been a very different world. And that’s where we learned we built strategy. So my strategy piece, I give a lot of credit to Rob Van who said, identify it, work through it, make sure you know what you’re going to do and then take the risk. And I think while we can build strategies and we can be as defined as we want to, we’ve got to be a little bit of a risk taker. And that’s part of being an entrepreneur, think as well.

Anthony Codispoti (35:19)
Is it the dynamic leader part of the question that has you feeling uncomfortable?

Joel Carver (35:26)
I that’s where you have to be I have to be really honest with myself When I first became a director of sales, I was not a very good one And I wasn’t a very good as a matter of fact my boss came to me one day and she said When we hired you we expected you to know what to do what you’re doing and you do that’s the good news Bad news is you’re not very well like

She said, problem is you either always have the answer or sometimes you wing it. And people will respect you more if you’ll just admit you don’t know what you don’t know. And I think part of becoming a leader, that was the biggest part of me truly understanding how to become a leader, is to lead with what we know, be strong about it and be honest about it.

⁓ And be willing to look our team in the face and say what I don’t know We’ll see if we can figure it out. But right now I don’t know and I think that was probably the watershed moment that helped me move from a Mediocre to poor leader to become what some will now call a dynamic leader is Is really honesty

It’s also meeting people where they are.

Anthony Codispoti (36:56)
Well, and I think that’s a great example there and I’m glad you shared it Joel because it’s a good reminder for folks that just because we’re not amazing at something right out of the gate doesn’t mean that we can’t be, right? It’s this difference of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. If you had been in a fixed mindset when somebody said, you’re not very well-liked, you know, there are parts of this that you’re not doing well, then you would have just thrown up your hands and said, well,

That’s just how I am. That’s just how this is going to be forever. But I’m going to guess it was really uncomfortable to hear that feedback, but you took it to heart and you were able to learn from it and grow from it going forward.

Joel Carver (37:37)
It was was one of the hardest moments professionally of my life. And again, this was a time ⁓ I was in Texas We were dealing with the oil crisis. We were dealing with the banking crisis. We were dealing with banks failing every day We were dealing with ⁓ them calling loans on hotels There was there were a lot of things going on and to be dealing with all those dynamics and then to hear and by the way You’re not very good at what you’re doing ⁓ was rocked but

had somebody not had the guts to say that to me, I probably would have just kept on doing what I was doing and thinking that was the way to manage because it was a way I had seen I had been managed earlier in my career. And so, you know, we learned by example.

Anthony Codispoti (38:25)
Was there something about the way that message was delivered to you that allowed you to receive it, to process it, and to use it as a leverage point to make yourself better versus if it had been delivered in a different way, I wonder if you would have been less receptive and more defensive?

Joel Carver (38:48)
So it was delivered about as directly as I’ve ever delivered a message in my life ⁓ And interestingly enough later in my career I had to deliver that same message to someone and It was not sugar-coated It was prefaced with when we hired you we expected you to know what you’re doing and you do ⁓ But then here’s the other part of

Anthony Codispoti (38:54)
Okay.

Joel Carver (39:18)
You’re not doing it. You’re not well received by your team And I think that did two things for me ⁓ Did I receive it really well I kind of doubt I did I Don’t remember that part exactly but I remember having to take it to heart and I remember Working to turn that team around and I don’t think I ever really did I don’t think it really

Manifest itself in my career until I moved to the next team and I had a fresh start But I could learn I could take what I learned and go, okay I’m gonna start with this from the beginning. This is gonna be me from the beginning

Anthony Codispoti (39:53)
Okay.

And so the employee that you later had to deliver that same message to, what did they do with it? How did they process it?

Joel Carver (40:10)
Delivered it twice I have delivered I delivered it once truly in the hotel world and I’ve had to deliver it once since we found in Carver to a Carver team member ⁓ So that was really personal and ⁓ The one in the in the hotel world Received it probably about like I did which was not well, but they took it to heart

And I know they become an exceptional leader in their own right. ⁓ and we’re still in contact and I think the world of her and, that’s done, that’s been great for her. ⁓ unfortunately on the Carver side, ⁓ in early Carver years, we had a person who had the same issue and she was on a, on a client in a client facing role with Carver and we had to sit down and have the very same conversation.

You know, you’re really good at what you do, but nobody likes you.

And she did not ultimately turn out to be a long-term player.

Anthony Codispoti (41:19)
Okay. So part of what I was trying to get at with those follow-up questions is I’m curious if it’s the delivery that really matters or if it’s more the recipient and how they’re wired.

And I know we’re talking about a very small sample size here, but I’d be curious to hear your opinion.

Joel Carver (41:42)
Well, since I don’t think I delivered the message any better than it was delivered when it was delivered to me, I suspect it’s the recipient and it’s how the recipient, what the recipient wants to do and how they want to engage ⁓ to really figure that out. ⁓

I don’t think I had the best answer for you on that one.

Anthony Codispoti (42:10)
Well, again, it’s a small sample size, but if we’re sort of judging based on just, you know, those few examples, I would tend to agree with you that it’s more about how the recipient is hardwired. I mean, I don’t think that gives, you know, carte blanche to the person making the delivery of the message, right? Like, you know, there’s a responsible way to do that. ⁓ But these are the things that fascinate me is sort of, you know, the human psychology behind why some people seem to take one

know, piece of feedback like that and go one positive way with it and somebody else takes it and can’t use that as a leverage point for themselves.

Joel Carver (42:50)
Now, I think it’s interesting. A mentor one time talked to me and I heard this word used about my father later in life about the word grace and how we deliver messages no matter how hard they are with grace. And to remember the person and put ourselves in the shoes of the person that we are delivering the message to you.

For many years I tried to do that, I’ve not always succeeded. ⁓ And sometimes the message has to be a little more strongly delivered than one that we might otherwise consider really being delivered with grace.

Anthony Codispoti (43:34)
You know, we’ve already talked through a number of challenges here so far, Joel. But, you know, my favorite question, and I let you know this, is I love to talk about a hard challenge that somebody’s overcome. And I think you’ve got a different one in mind that we want to go through here today and talk about how you got through it and what you learned.

Joel Carver (43:58)
And there we all have challenges in our lives and we have personal challenges in our lives and we have professional challenges in our lives and certainly that you’re not very well liked that was a real professional challenge, but the the one that was hardest to me ⁓ Is one that that I have to set the stage with ⁓ My mom was a nurse before I was born and my father was in the military and later in law enforcement

And they decided to open a restaurant in a small town in South Mississippi. They did it right after they had built their dream home. And the restaurant was not an immediate success. It was very much a long-term success, but not an immediate success. And they found themselves in a significant financial situation where quite honestly, they were about to have their home repossessed. ⁓ and they had to make the decision.

Do we try to save our home or do we save the business? And they made the decision to save the business and let the home go and they did it and That has always been a story that’s been in the back of my mind and I know how hard it was for them and ultimately the restaurant they opened was a wonderful success and it certainly allowed them to do all the things in life they wanted to do and it paid for college for me and for

Cars in high school and all those kind of things but not until after they had gone through that really rough foundational moment so when we jump forward to kovat we have a horrendous situation where the world has stopped revolving on its axis its business axis and Carver supported hospitality and the hospitality industry was horrendously hit and We didn’t know if Carver was going to survive

And then and I do all of our most serious talking in the pool. That’s just where we do it. I don’t know why, but for some reason it’s, it’s a playing field that keeps us relaxed and it keeps us able to have real conversations without them turning into arguments or any of those kinds of things. And we were in the pool one night and I said, I don’t know if Carver’s going to make it. ⁓

And his response was really direct. And he said, you do whatever you need to do. If you need to sell everything we have, you save karma because it is the long game. And luckily enough, thankfully, thankfully to PPP loans and the IDL loans and all those kinds of things in banking relationships where we had a great relationship with our institution, Carver was able to make it. We, we.

Susan Hart our CFO again could make a nickel last longer than I’ve ever seen But we did it and we did it and we came out of it not only relatively unscathed but the next year we had a 50 % growth over the previous years and revenues So but it was that same conscious decision that my parents had faced some 40 years before that said

We’re going to save the asset And just to tie that back. I told you about Ira Babin my first boss He had a great aunt that was woven into our story a little bit It was a great friend to a lot of people and she had a line that at first I thought was all about money and then I realized it’s about something else ⁓ and her line was sell a lamp if you have to but don’t ever touch the principles and

When she was referring to that, she was talking about investments. But in looking at it in the bigger, the more global picture, her line is, you do what you’ve got to do, but you protect the assets that are there for the long haul. That’s what my parents did. That’s what we did.

Anthony Codispoti (48:10)
And fortunately you didn’t have to sell everything, but how wonderful was it that you had the support of your partner to say, you got to do, behind you.

Joel Carver (48:22)
Yeah, is truly, I think that was the hardest moment in business and it was the most emotionally intense looking back on knowing that same conversation was held in two generations.

Anthony Codispoti (48:37)
At what point did you realize we’re gonna be okay?

Joel Carver (48:45)
Almost as quickly as we began to see the world beginning to reopen Carver came back ⁓ Interestingly enough task force never went to zero We never had a week where we did not have a task force consultant out there even when hospitality was closed We had hotel companies going we still have to have support doing things So we say we went down to one

but we never went to zero. And almost immediately as the industry began to recover, we started to recover. And because they were not, the industry was not prepared to start rehiring and bringing everybody back and people had made changes and started doing other things. They came back to us and as I said, we went from, you know, a $10 million organization to a $15 million organization almost overnight.

Anthony Codispoti (49:46)
Let’s, where do I want to go? I want to talk about your books. Okay. So you wrote already, there’s a book available called The People Effect.

Joel Carver (49:59)
I co-authored that with Mary Weber, was, ⁓ Mary and I became friends when we worked at CSM. She was the vice president of human resources and I have sales and marketing. And we began to work together and that developed a friendship. And when later we were both gone from CSM, we started talking about, we’d like to partner on something together. And that was the job was how do we write this book? How do we come together?

And the people effect was an interesting book and it was written from two perspectives. It was written from a fictitious person perspective in that we have characters that play all the way through the book and we see them work through real world scenarios and hotels. And then we come back in real technical and application processes of how do you support that and complete with forms and.

⁓ resources that help people manage people and to find the best of the best and keep the best of the best.

Anthony Codispoti (51:03)
It’s like a workbook in some sense.

Joel Carver (51:05)
It is. It’s a little bit. It’s a little bit of a fictional story with a workbook combined in it. ⁓ it did, did very well, but that was, it did publish right before COVID. ⁓ we’ve just sold out of the first printing and I think we’ve decided it, it’s still available online. It’s still available in Kindle. It’s still available in, ⁓ Barnes and Noble online and some of the other online applications. I don’t think we’re to go back through another printing of that particular book.

the world has changed so much that’s there. That there’s still a lot of fundamental good work there, but I think we’d have to rewrite it before we republish that.

Anthony Codispoti (51:43)
Pull out one thing that’s changed that would kind of make the content a little bit dated if you will

Joel Carver (51:54)
folks in the industry and I think more globally have had a couple things change. Number one, we’ve changed generations. So we’ve seen a new generation come up and the new generation is, think, correctly, ⁓ a lot more focused on their well-being and their family’s well-being than the previous generations were focused on our careers. ⁓ I look at my generation and we were focused on career and family took a second

physician in a lot of ways. ⁓ The younger generations are doing, I think, a much better job of saying, I’m going to take care of me and I’m going to take care of my family. And my job is the conduit to accomplish.

so We really have to look at those relationships differently and I think that’s one thing that we would do is we would we talked a lot about Millennials in that book and That that was completely accurate and completely on point But there are a couple other generations that are coming into play now and we’d have to go back and say we’re not just focusing on Millennials we’re talking about other generations as well and how those generations are going to interact and how

they’re going to support themselves and their families and how they’re going to intertwine that with their careers. And I think that’s part of the reason we’re seeing the gig economy the way it is. And I personally believe that we’re going to see over the next 24 to 36 months, a lot more focus on the gig economy and a lot wider focus on what we would consider traditional employment.

Anthony Codispoti (53:33)
interesting. Is that specifically in the industries that you guys are anchored in or do you see that just sort of big picture outside of that as well?

Joel Carver (53:41)
I see a big picture outside of that. I talk to a lot of folks who support staffing or employment or gig in a lot of industries and I’m seeing them work more and more and more. Even in our town of LaGrange, Georgia, which is a town of about 35,000 people, we are very heavily dependent on the automotive industry. And I see a lot of that beginning to float into the automotive industry.

It’s not a world I play in, but it’s a world a lot of colleagues play in.

Anthony Codispoti (54:16)
Interesting. And so these folks who want to transition into more of a gig where they work when they want to kind of a thing. ⁓ What’s the thought process behind benefits, insurance, ⁓ retirement? How are people wrapping their heads around that?

Joel Carver (54:34)
Well, there are a lot of things and then part of that is your organization, right? ⁓ There are ⁓ Professional organizations that they can become members of and they can look for support in that way. So how do I get health insurance? How do I get medical insurance or vision insurance? How do I get the typical things that we think of as employment resources, right? ⁓ For many years thinking of my own career I could

If I needed, I would certainly get help benefits through my employer. Now we have to look for through partner organizations or associations that can provide and can help folks find again, health insurance and even as deep as go into retirement planning. Because now the world is very different today than it was in our parents’ time. In our parents’ time, there was a pension plan. In our world.

there were not largely in the corporate world pension plans. Some companies still had them. But in hospitality, we focused on 401Ks. And how did we build our retirement that way? ⁓ And so now we’re looking for other organizations like yours, and I see a lot more partnerships coming on. And I see a lot more ability for folks to make ⁓ personal empowerment decisions.

Anthony Codispoti (55:58)
Yeah.

Joel Carver (56:00)
that I think is not without its challenges because people are going to have to make informed decisions and the right business decisions. And just because we’re good at doing something doesn’t mean we’re good at the business side of making those decisions ourselves.

Anthony Codispoti (56:17)
Yeah, and I hear that from a lot of guests, from a lot of clients that, you know, even when they’ve got sort of those W-2 employees, they’re not gig workers, they’re, they have a hard time explaining to them and helping them sort of see that this is the right path forward. And so for folks who are sort of on their own, I could see that being an even bigger challenge, but it’ll be interesting to see how this unfolds in the next two to three years, like you said.

Joel Carver (56:44)
It will. seeing now delving into the gig worker piece and a little, we saw this a bit when we tried the staffing model, the amount of the American population that is unbanked, that’s a very rudimentary thing. think, well you just tried down to the bank and open checking account. Well, no. ⁓ First of all, we’re seeing a generation that doesn’t relate in the same way to brick and mortar banks.

We’re also seeing a number of people who, quite honestly, don’t qualify to be a traditional banking customer. And for as many years as we’ve been able to do that, we’ve worked with financial institutions and other professional organizations to say, okay, how can we provide the services to these independent consultants or the resources to them so they can make the right decisions for themselves?

Anthony Codispoti (57:42)
I understand that you’re working on a new book, Joel. Are we ready to talk about that yet?

Joel Carver (57:47)
⁓ I think we’re as ready as we’re ever going to be.

Anthony Codispoti (57:49)
Okay.

What’s the inspiration? Is there a title? What’s this book?

Joel Carver (57:53)
There’s the title and the title is the inspiration ⁓ But to do that I have to set a stage and go back to my family my mother’s ⁓ family my mother my mother’s mother was weren’t one of ⁓ nine children and It was they were a very conservative ⁓ Family in rural South, Mississippi. Most of them were farmers. My grandparents were dairy farmers ⁓

and this family.

again in so many ways were conservative but they had a saying in this family and that saying was peace is about to cease and all hell’s gonna break loose and As I started looking over my career I realized that my life and my career had followed that saying in so many times Just when I thought something was great and everything was going along well then all hell broke loose it was

You know, a boss that set me down and said, you know, you’re not very well locked or, in the, banking and the oil crisis, we thought everything was good. And then a hotel was repossessed or a hotel was sold. ⁓ and where I thought I had a foundation, a rug was pulled out from under me. ⁓ so I looked through, I took that line and I started looking for correlations all through my life.

of where peace ceased and all hell broke loose. And that’s become the title and the foundation of the book. And I think I’m at about chapter 15 of probably what’s going to end up being 22 or 23 chapters in the first round. And I’m hopeful that that will go to the publisher end of the year.

Anthony Codispoti (59:46)
Okay. So early 2026, maybe we’ll see this book out. Okay. And if people want to get updates, they can.

Joel Carver (59:57)
They can certainly ⁓ sign up on Carver.com or the Carver companies.com You’ll there’ll be updates published there ⁓ They’re also there is my my speaker and my author site, which is meet Joel Carver comm and they’re always ⁓ Updates there and they can sign up for updates on that side as well

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:17)
So let’s talk a little bit about the speaking that you do. Who hires you? Where do you go? What do you talk about?

Joel Carver (1:00:25)
So it’s interesting that has turned out to be a much more entertaining, no pun intended piece of my life. And I really thought ⁓ it started in the university classroom and it started with me being invited to speak to, to college classes. My first one was at Johnson and Wales and it was a partnership between Johnson and Wales and Hotel Sales and Marketing Association International. And, and that was a group I really enjoyed and I still enjoy.

⁓ the college classroom. This year I got to work with the State College System of Georgia and work with some groups there and speak to them and that was a lot of fun. But I also now get to speak to hotel brands. ⁓ Sometimes when they’re having their annual conferences, I’ve been invited to speak there, certainly to property management groups when they’re having their annual conferences with show managers and directors of sales. ⁓

I always have the most fun talking about selling, but probably the most entertaining is now to be able to weave the people component or the people effect from the book into the other component and into the selling side for me. So it’s great. It’s a great marriage.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:45)
I like it. Joel, I’ve just got one more question for you, but before I ask it, I want to do a few things. First of all, to get in touch with our guest today, we heard a couple of the options there already. There’s meetjolcarver.com if you’re interested in his books or his speaking opportunities. There is the carvercompanies.com for the staffing company that we’ve spent the bulk of the time talking about. They’ve also got a phone number where real human being answers, I’m told.

Joel Carver (1:02:12)
every time.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:13)
And the number for that is 404-254-3130. Again, 404-254-3130. We’ll include links for all of this in the show notes, but in case you’re driving and you’re listening and you’ve got a good memory, 404-254-3130. Also, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to addbackbenefits.com. And then if you want to take just a moment,

Leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app. We will be forever grateful. All right, Joel, last question for you. You and I reconnect one year from today and you are fist pumping in the air excited about something. What is this big thing that you’re going to celebrate one year from today?

Joel Carver (1:03:01)
Well, that’s looking into the future. So we’re gonna make a guess. ⁓ And I’m gonna guess that it’s the…

What’s now a pyramid? ⁓ And it is task force. It is ⁓ permanent placement relationships. And it’s providing true on-demand workers through the gig world. And at the end of the day, no matter what it is, it’s all about people. And it’s all about making sure that the…

supply and the demand sides meet. And that every place that an organization needs people, those people are provided when they need it, where they need it, and with the background they need. So for me, the fist pump moment is going to be seeing those three come together. And I believe that’s going to happen in 2026.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:04)
excited for you looking forward to it. We’ll have to reconnect to make sure that that’s actually on track.

Joel Carver (1:04:09)
Well, thank you. appreciate it. It’s been a great time. This has been fun. it’s been it’s been interesting actually having to think through the answers to some of these questions. And I wish that I had had time to to tell the honest story about after forming Carver ⁓ as we were going through both moments. ⁓ Susan Hart and I struggled to work together. And to

I was always considered and defined as an early adapter, right? I could look beyond what we’re doing today and say, you know what? I can see that. Let’s take a shot at that. That’s good. And Susan was driven completely by a number and what she couldn’t see made her very, nervous. And it got so bad at one point that she and I struggled to work together. And

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:04)
Mmm.

Joel Carver (1:05:05)
I went to our director of human resources at the time and I said, I’d like you to find a, ⁓ an industrial psychologist to see if we can, if they can help Susan and I more, become more effective leaders together. And, interestingly enough, you couldn’t find an industrial psychologist in Atlanta at the time. And he came back and he said, ⁓ I didn’t find that, but I’ve kind of marriage counselor that’s willing to work with the two of you. And so Susan and I went to marriage counseling. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (1:05:34)
Wow.

Joel Carver (1:05:35)
reminds and at the end of that time, we came out of that much stronger and able to communicate much better and work together much better. And it not only made a difference in our relationship, it made a difference in all of Carver’s relationship because they were all feeling the pressure of two senior leaders battling each other. And, and we walked out of that in the psychologist said the last day, said, I got to tell you.

I’ve had more fun with you than I’ve had with a lot of married couples. said, because you two both came into this going, we want this to work. of the two of you ever pointed a finger at the other one and said, she’s doing this or he’s doing this. You both came in and said, how do we look at ourselves to make the change? And when we walked out, she said, I feel great about the two of you. And the company responded to that. And people came up to us and said, it’s a whole different world.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:32)
Wow.

Joel Carver (1:06:32)
If you interact together now than it was before this.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:36)
So at its core, was it mostly about each of you figuring out how to talk in the other person’s language? Like how can I communicate my vision in a way that you can understand it or not?

Joel Carver (1:06:52)
It was more fundamental about how do we meet the needs of the other person in relationship to ourselves? So as another boss of fine used to say when I ask you what time it is, I didn’t ask you how to build a clock It’s important for Susan when I asked her for a number to build that number Logically and justify each piece of that number

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:05)
Huh.

Joel Carver (1:07:18)
That’s not important to me. What’s important to me is if I want to say, if I say, what’s our gross margin for this month, I’m looking for an answer. I’m looking for a number. Right. I don’t need to know every component of that. Gotcha. What Susan needs to be able to say and to articulate to me how she got to that number. So part of that was I had to learn to have the respect for Susan to let her work through the process.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:20)
Mm-hmm.

Joel Carver (1:07:48)
But Susan had to learn how to answer the question by telling me what time it was and then saying, now I’d like to walk you through how I got there. If you’re willing to, if you’re ready to receive it. And I had to be ready to receive it. So we both had to learn to meet each other where we were. And we always laugh and we give great credit to this wonderful counselor who talked us through that and helped us understand what being a partner means.

Anthony Codispoti (1:07:58)
you

Mm.

Joel Carver (1:08:17)
not just in our spousal relationships, but, yeah, this is relationship.

Anthony Codispoti (1:08:25)
That’s a wrap on another episode of the inspired stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today

Joel Carver (1:08:30)
you